In the future, the darkness will withdraw. And there will be hope fulfilled.

In the future, people will exercise democracy online.

There will be one vast global Network, undivided. Everybody will belong to a Community of similar individuals and the Communities will have a Priority in the Network, the more members, the higher, measured on a scale of one to ten. Members of a Community themselves will have priority within it, depending on their importance to the Community's goals; individuals not only important, but instrumental to the definition of the Community, will have influence on it. And Communities whose existence will be crucial to the Network itself, will have Influence on it.

These will generally be pPriority to access data; and iInfluence on the people who have it.

Physical resources and labour, wealth and access to it, will be managed by the Network; the Communities will vote, their votes will decide for the economy of the One World. The Communities will be governments and citizens- they will be judges and jurors when they decide that a crime has been commited. Laws will be the archives of their online discussions. The votes of the Communities with the greater Priority will have greater value- but the ones with the higher Influence will be heard and respected, as those of gurus and wise people of universal caliber. Communities will play the game of war and allies: they will trade Priority, they will recognise each other as Influential on the Network and there will even be inter-Communal influence, where members of one Community will be granted influence on another (and even priority to its' data). Acts of war will attack an enemy Community's credit with the Network, to reduce its' Priority and weaken its' memebers' votes.

Entertainment will be the most populous Community, but its' Priority will not be too high, because everybody will be a member. When a conflict is initiated, members of uninvolved Communities will represent Entertainment, to observe and report to the rest of the Network, acting as arbiters. Their verdict will determine which Community must lose face and Priority and which one must gain; Entertainment will decide the outcome of wars.

When a crime is perpetrated against an individual, the members of her Community will rally to her aid. Her Community will publish an accusation and post a call to judgment. Then, the offender's Community will do the same. Shortly, the two Communities and other related ones, allies and enemies and neutral observers, will gather online and network through a trial. When a member of one Community commits a crime against another, the members of the Community itself will congregate to judge, sometimes with other Communities playing the role of neutral observers.

And of course, a single person might have full membership to several Communities. People like that, will be ambassadors of the Network; they will be extremely useful to everyone, because they will possess influence (and even personnal pInfluence, the rarest, most valued treasure of all) on different parts of the Network- and this will reflect on the trust of Communities with opposing interests, to the ambassador's ability to think of The Network First.

Because the Network must be maintained. The Network will guarantee that everyone has power and control. Should the Network collapse, every individual will be reduced, everyone will suffer, everyone will lose. And there would be no telling who will come on top and to whom the lessened power will go. For that reason, people will safeguard the Network, as they should have safeguarded democracy, they will safeguard their pPriority and iInfluence, and their Communities, as they should have safeguarded human rights. And they will gather around the ones who will know the ways to keep it all going, as they would have gathered in the distant past, on a battlefield, around a heroic general, to fight under their command.

They will fight for their freedom to live outside of national borders, and to live lives untranslatable to monetary values.

And they will win every day, with every terrabyte of data exchanged.

In the nervous system of a sleeping god, a new mankind will be dreamed to existence.

And only they shall conquer the stars.